Storytelling: Writing as Medicine (even in University)
Kłlil’xᵂ, Spotted Lake, a very sacred and healing water body in southern Syilx Okanagan Peoples’ land and cosmology. Spotted Lake holds sacred, spiritual and healing knowledge within the Syilx Okanagan cosmology, land/water-based knowledge system, and physical and metaphysical realities.
“Learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits, and the ancestors.”
First Peoples’ Principles of Learning (The First Nations Education Steering Committee)
“And you return the gift one more time. And you ask for that gift to be directed, so that in some small way, maybe in some small measure, someone, somewhere might find the calm and the assurance that you’re seeking to bring to that page.”
Richard Wagamese (Anishinaabe author).
Storytelling and the speaking, listening, reading and writing skills involved in storytelling is a healing, transformative process for all involved, the teller and the receiver of the story. Indigenous authors have voiced this as the case and have also connected the healing to reviving Indigenous languages and how important it is to tell the story even in “the enemy’s language” of english.
Anishinaabe writer, Richard Wagamese, for example, was a prolific author of novels and poetic writings. Wagamese was widely recognized for his novel Indian Horse which was made into a film. The quotation above shows how Richard Wagamese understood and experienced writing as having spiritual, healing and guiding powers and how grateful he was for this spiritually and ancestrally given gift for writing.
Examples
“You know sometimes you wake up in the morning, at 4 o‘clock in the middle of winter, and in that pure and unfiltered darkness you make your way into the living room and you light a candle. And you sit there for a while and you think about what it is that you‘re about to do, and you ask for as much guidance and strength from The Creator as possible.
And you return the gift one more time. And you ask for that gift to be directed, so that in some small way, maybe in some small measure, someone, somewhere might find the calm and the assurance that you’re seeking to bring to that page.
And then you start the long walk down the hallway to the place where you‘ll sit for hours, alone and in solitude, and hope that the stories that live inside the curl of your knuckles can be coaxed outward one more time.
And you sit there and you breathe and you hope and you dream and you close your eyes, and you feel the essence of that gift radiating inside you. And you put your fingers on that keyboard and watch while they emerge out upon the screen.
And you wait for that time when you know that that perfect sentence has just occurred. And there‘s a gladdening in your spirit when that happens, and you seek to write another one, just like it, to follow it across the page.
And in my experience, that‘s the nature of a writer‘s life.
That immaculate sense of solitude, when there‘s just you and the language and the air and the universe and that gift that Creator downloaded you with free-of-charge….in an immaculate measure of grace…
My formal education ended in grade 9 and I have never been back, I’ve never taken a training course, I’ve never taken anything. The only thing that I’ve taken is the open opportunity that laid between the covers of a book.
And I read and I read and I read and by sheer volume alone I found out what a good sentence was and how a strong paragraph is constructed and how a great narrative arc is carried through the course of a long and lengthy story.
And at sixty years old here I am. And to be recognized at this level is really really the highwater mark of my life. And there are a ton of people to thank. I’ve been doing this for 34 years in one way, shape, form or another.
~ Richard Wagamese, Anishnaabe writer, Writers Trust of Canada, Winner of the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life, Nov 3 2015, Toronto.
If the telling of a story is healing and has power then it stands to reason that reading a story and that even writing a story can have a healing effect and powerful agency in the world. Indigenous authors such as Richard Wagamese have voiced this as the case.
Indigenous university students at The University of British Columbia Okanagan reflect on their writing education experience at university. The students offer their vision for future university writing education.
Métis astrophysics and computer science student, Dakota Bonvie speaks in the first video:
Métis creative writing student, Matthew Wanbon speaks in the second video:
Reflections
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Similar to Indigenous Peoples’ fiction, poetry and memoir genres of writing, university writing can have healing effects and powerful agency. What is it about writing that activates agency to make change happen?
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How can university students (and researchers and instructors) engaged in reading and writing also bring about effects leading to increased transformative power and agency?
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Where have you noticed or experienced the healing and transformative power of writing in your life, in your family or in your networks?
Further Reading
- First Principles of Learning. The First Nations Education Steering Committee. 2006-2007.
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Jo-ann Archibald (Stó:lō Nation and St’at’imc ancestry). Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit. UBC Press. 2008.
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Jeannette C. Armstrong (Syilx Okanagan). Constructing Indigeneity: Syilx Okanagan Oraliture and tmixʷcentrism. Universität Greifswald, December 2009. P.p. 148-150. Accessed via website: ACLALS.
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Jeannette C. Armstrong (Syilx Okanagan). Paper: Literature for Our Times.
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Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek). “She Had Some Horses.” She Had Some Horses. W. W. Norton, 2008 (1983).
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Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek). US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo Closing Event. Library of Congress. April 28, 2022. (Watch/Listen from 23:02 onward).
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Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek) and Gloria Bird, editors. Reinventing The Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America. W.W. Norton, 1998.
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Daniel Health Justice (Cherokee). Introduction. Indigenous Literatures Matter. 2017.
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Richard Wagamese (Anishinaabe). Acceptance Speech. “Celebration of a Writing Life” Writers Trust of Canada, Winner of the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life, Nov 3 2015, Toronto.
- Richard Wagamese. “Richard Wagamese at Reading for the Love of It 2015.” East York-Scarborough Reading Association. YouTube. October 15, 2015.